Works

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A troutling, some time since,
Endeavour'd vainly to convince
A hungry fisherman
Of his unfitness for the frying-pan.
That controversy made it plain
That letting go a good secure,...

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A Wolf, replete
With humanity sweet,
(A trait not much suspected,)
On his cruel deeds,
The fruit of his needs,
Profoundly thus reflected.

'I'm hated,' said he,...

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The wolves are prone to play the glutton.
One, at a certain feast, 'tis said,
So stuff'd himself with lamb and mutton,
He seem'd but little short of dead.
Deep in his throat a bone stuck fast....

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As went the goat her pendent dugs to fill,
And browse the herbage of a distant hill,
She latch'd her door, and bid,
With matron care, her kid; -
'My daughter, as you live,...

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This wolf another brings to mind,
Who found dame Fortune more unkind,
In that the greedy, pirate sinner,
Was balk'd of life as well as dinner.
As saith our tale, a villager...

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A wolf, whose gettings from the flocks
Began to be but few,
Bethought himself to play the fox
In character quite new.
A shepherd's hat and coat he took,
A cudgel for a crook,...

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By-gone a thousand years of war,
The wearers of the fleece
And wolves at last made peace;
Which both appear'd the better for;
For if the wolves had now and then...

With her fair face she made my heaven,
Beneath whose stars and moon and sun
I worshiped, praying, having striven,
For wealth through which she might be won.
And yet she had no soul: A woman...

An angel was tired of heaven, as he lounged in the golden street;
His halo was tilted sideways, and his harp lay mute at his feet;
So the Master stooped in His pity, and gave him a pass to go,...

What will I say when face to face with God
My naked soul shall come, seared with the stain
That men call sin? Why, God will understand;
He knew my pitiful story long before...

The Woman at the Washtub,
She works till fall of night;
With soap and suds and soda
Her hands are wrinkled white.
Her diamonds are the sparkles
The copper-fire supplies;
Her opals are the bubbles...

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I hate that saying, old and savage,
"'Tis nothing but a woman drowning."
That's much, I say. What grief more keen should have edge
Than loss of her, of all our joys the crowning?...

A stranger, I threaded sunken-hearted
A lamp-lit crowd;
And anon there passed me a soul departed,
Who mutely bowed.
In my far-off youthful years I had met her,...

"Why do you stand in the dripping rye,
Cold-lipped, unconscious, wet to the knee,
When there are firesides near?" said I.
"I told him I wished him dead," said she.

"Yea, cried it in my haste to one...

Why have you come? to see me in my shame?
A thing to spit on, to despise and scorn?
And then to ask me! You, by whom was torn
And then cast by, like some vile rag, my name!...

My trade was old when the world was new,
Ere the pyramids rose by the Nile
Men quitted their wives, and gave me their goods
For the warmth of my kiss, and my smile.
For never was wife who could hold her man...

The woman with jewels sits in the cafe,
Spraying light like a fountain.
Diamonds glitter on her bulbous fingers
And on her arms, great as thighs,
Diamonds gush from her ear-lobes over the goitrous throat....

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There's nothing like a secret weighs;
Too heavy 'tis for women tender;
And, for this matter, in my days,
I've seen some men of female gender.

To prove his wife, a husband cried,...

It is up from out the alleys, from the alleys dark and vile,
It is up from out the alleys I have struggled for a while,
Just to breathe the breath of Heaven ere my devil drags me down,...

Come, tell me where the maid is found.
Whose heart can love without deceit,
And I will range the world around,
To sigh one moment at her feet.

Oh! tell me where's her sainted home,...